Physicians are masterful at hiding. It’s part of the training.

Conditions
December 28, 2022

Dr. Dominic Corrigan appeared to have it all.

He’d wanted to be a doctor since he was young.

So he worked hard, got into med school, took out a loan and did what it took to realize his dream.

“I was high functioning, upwardly mobile, respected specialist leading a department, doing international research, sitting on charity boards and the PTA,” says Corrigan — a pseudonym for the founder of an international doctors-for-doctors support …

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A national strategy on hunger, nutrition, and health [PODCAST]

Podcast
December 27, 2022
YouTube video

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“I acknowledge that many problems currently plague our country. However, hunger, food insecurity, and poor health are national priorities that require an immediate and robust response. The Biden-Harris Administration’s hunger, nutrition, and health strategy answers the call …

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Myths and misconceptions about virtual primary health care

Tech
December 27, 2022

Virtual primary care, unlike virtual urgent care, involves doctors who take the time to get to know their patients, creating (and nurturing) trusted doctor-patient relationships. Virtual primary care requires that doctors be consistently available for providing ongoing care to their patients.

Can doctors who meet their patients via video form an effective doctor-patient relationship, and does that relationship lead to appropriate and needed primary care?

The answer is a resounding “yes” on …

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Think you aren’t a part of the destruction of the medical profession? Think again.

Physician
December 27, 2022

As apparent as it may be to the predators of the medical profession, physicians themselves, thinking about the future of what the medical profession will be like by 2040, have yet to understand how they continue to be astonishingly complicit in the upcoming radical changes in health care and the medical profession.

You and I know that all physicians in our nation, especially those in clinical medical practice, have been brainwashed …

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Working through a pandemic and watching the health care system crumble around me

Physician
December 27, 2022

The first dying patient I saw as a medical student was a man newly diagnosed with lung cancer, a chronic smoker with now oxygen-dependent COPD. In rounds, our medical team stopped outside his room, and the learned men and women pontificated about what to do next with the man. Chemo? Radiation? Both? I pretended to listen and rubbed my chin with feigned discernment, trying to understand the conversation like any …

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A physician’s postpartum depression [PODCAST]

Podcast
December 26, 2022
YouTube video

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“I may be practicing the art of repression and washing myself of any speck of contamination that would take me back to the state from which I have come very far. My suffering of the past, today, …

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The time is ripe for virtual care solutions in COPD

Conditions
December 26, 2022

There’s a burgeoning crisis taking hold in the COPD management space; there are simply not enough pulmonologists, respiratory therapists, or pulmonary rehabilitation facilities to treat the growing number of COPD patients. This has left our field with an urgent window of opportunity to implement digital innovation into traditional treatment paradigms. Ironically enough, it was a respiratory disease that led to a global pandemic more than two years ago, which …

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A physician shares his financial mistakes

Finance
December 26, 2022

Physicians often make mistakes when it comes to their personal finances and wealth-building strategy. We are human, after all. Private forums, blogs, and podcasts are filled with horror stories of physicians being scammed into buying expensive whole-life insurance, having disability insurance that didn’t include own-occupation coverage, and being steered toward high-fee investment vehicles by financial advisors. There are also countless situations, such as messy divorces, the risks of doing business …

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The key to reversing the aging process

Physician
December 26, 2022

There is no escape from our ultimate decline and death. The sooner we accept and embrace that reality, the freer we are to live life to the fullest now. So when I speak of reversing the aging process, I’m really referring to reversing the acceleration. If you recall the Newtonian physics from your high school physics class, acceleration is the velocity …

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Building individual health equity [PODCAST]

Podcast
December 25, 2022
YouTube video

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“Building individual health equity starts with a commitment to price transparency.  The current system favors a broader, value-based model that does not require individual fees for services. Resources are allocated based on outcomes and are dependent on …

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What’s the sense of having a living will if it’s not honored?

Conditions
December 25, 2022

‘This victory ensures that advance planning documents are legally enforceable and will be respected by doctors; if they are not, individuals can hold providers accountable for violating their health care decisions.”
– Greenberg decision, 2022

Dr. Gerald Greenberg was a New York dentist when in 2010, he was diagnosed with early-onset dementia. In 2011, he executed a living will stating the medical staff was to provide comfort measures only and no medical …

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The vampire, phlebotomy, and advocating for my care

Conditions
December 25, 2022

Every five weeks, I see a different vampire from the phlebotomy and give this collective of blood-suckers consent to take my blood. The crimson-filled, turquoise-capped vacutainer is destined for analysis to see how fast my blood coagulates. If the vampires read my chart, they would see the graph showing values dating back to 2015, marking my third open-heart surgery when I got my mechanical aortic valve. My lab testing is …

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Can Medicare advance directives be simple?

Physician
December 25, 2022

Consider Medicare enrollment with the end in mind. In case of emergency, do seniors prefer medical care or holistic care? Might they designate a medical power of attorney or a merciful power of attorney? Do they oblige CPR or sign a DNR order?

The JAMA Network just published Death and End-of-Life Care in Emergency Departments in the U.S. This retrospective cohort study concludes that,

Robust systems of emergency care …

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Being a physician and a son at the same time [PODCAST]

Podcast
December 24, 2022
YouTube video

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“As we continue this journey as a family in what will likely be an even more challenging six months ahead, the last six months have provided lifelong lessons. Equipped with these learnings, a new exciting professional opportunity …

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The solution to America’s primary care shortage is direct primary care 

Physician
December 24, 2022

Primary care in the United States is on the brink of collapse. Primary care providers suffer existential burnout, are the lowest compensated among all medical specialties, and there is a crisis-level shortage of primary care physicians, especially in health professional shortage areas. Despite strong evidence linking primary care (unlike any other medical specialty) to a better quality of life, longer life expectancy, better patient experience, and lower total …

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When contentment falls short

Physician
December 24, 2022

Sliding toward another solstice, I feel myself yearning. I want the daylight to stay a little longer, soft like this, gentle warmth and lovely shadows, lazy breezes, the illusion of contentment.

But I am not content. Or perhaps I am, but whereas I once thought contentment was the goal, the sentiment makes me uneasy now.

“Nothing gold can stay,” Robert Frost wrote. To stay content would be to embrace the shift in …

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What consumers want from telehealth

Tech
December 24, 2022

After becoming more familiar with telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing number of consumers today are realizing the value and convenience of virtual visits for minor urgent issues, chronic disease management, and mental health services.

At the same time, an overwhelming majority of consumers believe it is important that both their regular doctor and their telehealth provider have access to their health records for sharing critical data such as current …

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A medical student’s greatest mistake

Education
December 23, 2022

I made a mistake.

I almost failed out of undergrad as a premed. Yet this wasn’t the greatest mistake, the one that’s only now dawning on me as I stand at a crossroads in considerable decision-making despair.

Growing up in a loving yet highly dysfunctional home, I turned down a full presidential scholarship to attend a highly coveted college to make my parents, who grew up impoverished, proud. Yet the lingering trauma …

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Who’s holding space for you?

Physician
December 23, 2022

The first time I saw someone die was when I volunteered in the ER as an undergraduate student.

That day I was helping in the trauma bay, and my job was to quickly run STAT or urgent blood specimens to the lab.

The year was 1994. It was winter time, and the tension of the people sitting in the waiting room was palpable to me every time I would go through those …

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